Album of the month

As a child of a pioneer of the Boogie-Woogie & Blues played in Europe, one would quickly think that this style of music was instilled at an early age. Of course in our house in Krommenie there was ‘sometimes’ music when my father was playing, but there was hardly ever music played. Logical really, because someone who performs 3, 4 or sometimes 5 times a week has heard enough music by then. As far as that goes, history repeats itself when I look at how much my children have learned and experienced from ‘music at home’. Anyway, DNA does not deny itself and so I have been walking the same path as my father for 31 years now. However, the first time I consciously ‘experienced’ a record myself was through my neighbor’s boy who in 1987 showed me the newly released U2 album ‘The Joshua Tree’. What a sound … And that guitar … Whole landscapes passed before my eyes. Later, when I got a record player I dove right into my mother and father’s very modest “collection. Little Richard, The Rolling Stones, Erroll Garner, Ten Years After, Elvis, Randy Newman etc. I loved it. So did “A Hard Road” by John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. That became one of my favorites when I later started playing guitar. I once had that LP signed by John Mayall. But yes… Kees Dusink has already….hmmmmm.Then I now choose the double LP ‘John Lee Hooker & Canned Heat’ with the highlight being the 12-minute version of ‘Boogie Chillun’ with an absolute peerless starring role for Alan Wilson in it, who blows a piece of harmonica on it that to this day gives me goosebumps. My father could also enjoy that enormously. That power, that purity! An underrated child as far as I’m concerned, both this rendition and Alan Wilson himself. Enjoy!  

For me it didn’t start with blues; I was 12 years old and in the evenings with my little transistor radio under the covers listening on medium wave to ‘Beatleshour’ on radio Luxemburg. I loved the Beatles, the Stones on 2 and there was an English band, The Yardbirds, with one Eric Clapton as guitarist, never heard of it…. but…then came 1966. By now I was playing bass guitar in a school band and through friends I discovered an LP of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, the famous ‘Beano album’ (by the way, do you put it in your record closet with the M or the C?). Great, what power in that music. Who had written all those songs? There had to be more of that. And what a sound Clapton got out of his guitar and how did he do it? It turned out to be a Gibson Les Paul with a Marshall amp, now known as the Bluesbreaker, man what a sound! In the window of music store Leny Bossink in Apeldoorn was a real Marshall Bluesbreaker! Back then, as a brat of 14, you didn’t just go in; my friends and I regularly stood with our noses pressed against the store window and dreamed. It stopped there, because I never started playing guitar, the bass guitar stayed. I played that LP until I couldn’t anymore (even the cover didn’t come out of the battle unscathed, see photo). I was sold on the blues and then of course discovered Dutch bands like Cuby and the Blizzards and Living Blues and all those fantastic Americans, like BB, Albert and Freddie King (I consider myself very fortunate to have seen the latter live twice in the early ’70s at the open air theater in Lochem and Paradiso Amsterdam), Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otish Rush, and so on; a long list. I never lost that love for blues and closely related music. Thanks to all those heroes!

Choose the LP of the month for Blues in Wijk… It’s great to be allowed to do this, but then it turns out to be quite a challenge! After all, several LPs have contributed greatly to the style of my own music, so which one do you choose?…. Brother Dege? His music made me start playing slide guitar and on a resonator. Rory Gallagher? Or will it be… Yes! Then it will be Robben Ford. Because without this blues giant I wouldn’t have been introduced to the blues at all. The album “Talk To Your Daughter” was the reason I wanted to learn to play the blues on the guitar. This song and the album are really precious memories for me. At some point during my studies at the conservatory, I lost the direction of my own music. In graduation year, you were researching an artist or piece of music. I lost track at that point, had no idea what to choose! The search for my music led me to my old phone that I hadn’t looked at in a few years. There I came across all kinds of MP3s on it. The song “Talk To Your Daughter” came along and I remember it felt like a “thunderclap. It occurred to me: this is what I want! Just play guitar with emotion and bam! I found that in the blues. For me in this song it’s in the intro, how his guitar pops in. Technically it is very well played, yet there is also a lot of feeling in his playing. At just the right moments he gives space to his solo. There are many good blues guitarists, but with Robben Ford I’m always impressed how he manages to dress it up melodically as well. For me, it’s an incredibly balanced album. Full of blues traditionals and his own interpretation of them, but also forays into a more “soul and fusion” sound like on the song “Help The Poor. His solos on this album are always on point, bluesy and with forays into other styles. Once I got to see him live. He hadn’t been in Europe for a while and I really wanted to see him live. So when he was coming to Paris at the “Le Trianon” theater, I immediately ordered tickets. Backed by young musicians, he put on a fantastic live show. Although he himself exuded a tremendously calm energy, his solos were imbued with emotion. Halfway through the show his amplifier failed so he went to play air guitar for a while. Once back in the Netherlands I found out that two months later he would be performing practically around the corner, haha.

Although The Nighthawks have been around since 1972, I chose this record from 1993. Due to the fact that I rolled into the blues from the rockablilly scene as a singer-guitarist, I actually first became acquainted with the (then) more modern blues artists. That’s how I first heard of Microwave Dave and the Nukes on a blues program on Belgian radio. I liked that but didn’t pay any further attention to it at the time. Some time later I was on a road trip in the southern states of the USA and, as if by chance, ended up in a club in Nashville called Printers Alley. On the stage was a drum kit with Microwave Dave’s name on it. “It can’t be?” I thought to myself, but it was. That night we enjoyed their performance and afterwards we went for a chat because I was also writing articles for “Back to the Roots” at the time. We had a nice chat and Dave invited me to come back and listen the next day. No sooner said than done and the day after, on my birthday, we were back at Printers Alley. The band came in, greeted us and I told them it was my birthday. Halfway through their gig they suddenly stopped: “We have a birthday in the house,” Dave called out and I was allowed on stage. There he gave me my first harmonica and I had to play along with the band. I tried very hard but nothing good came out of it. I took the harmonica home and one day I put on “Rock This House” by the Nighthawks. I tried to play along a little on the first song, the title track, and I heard that at least the key was already right. I played that song about 2,500 times after that and each time I tried to play along and each time it got a little better. So actually I can say that Mark Wenner taught me to play harmonica, accompanied by Danny Morris. Years later I even decided to stop playing guitar on stage and devote myself entirely to singing and harmonica, and to this day I’m still glad I walked into Printers Alley in Nashville on the right day then. And ‘Rock This House’ I still put on regularly because it remains a good record and with Bill & The Burners we even play their version of ’16 Tons’ now.

In 1962 two German promoters, Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau, sensed a commercial opportunity to present a yearly blues package tour to European audiences that would run for the next nine years and then have a renaissance in the eighties. They brought over a collection of some of the finest African American blues musicians on the USA scene. Legendary names over the years included T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Son House and Skip James. These blues performers were transplanted from performing in loud American neighborhood bars and plunged into playing in concert halls and theaters designed for hosting operas and classical music concerts with perfectly designed acoustics and silent and sophisticated European audiences. These audiences would sit stony faced, dressed up for an up-market concert experience sitting silently and focusing on the stage and concentrating on every single note sung and played by each artist – like they would an opera singer, orchestra or string quartet. All the artists got a rapturous reception, but in the 1963 tour one artist stood out above the rest, for the critics and the audiences alike. The undisputed star of the show was blues harmonica master Sonny Boy Williamson. When we look at the video footage today, some of these classic blues artists noticeably struggle to relax and work the highly formalised situation and with much less volume but far more detail than a bar gig would require. Not Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy flourished in these conditions. He captivated these huge, sophisticated and deadly quiet audiences by holding back when playing and singing. When he performed it wasn’t a just thoughtless surge of incredible musical talent. The spine-chilling musical magic came from the knife edge tension he created by restraining himself and trying to play as few notes as possible but infusing each note with as much musical thought and sensitivity (rhythmical, textural, dynamic, tonal and emotional) as he could. He seemed, when performing, to be as much trying to fascinate himself as fascinate the audience and all the while hiding this complexity behind a couldn’t care less attitude – a classic ironical double bluff that the audience was subtly informed of by the not unaware glint in his eye.  His approach was described by no less than The Sunday Times as “Perfect artistry” and by a European newspaper reviewer from Strasbourg described him as “Homo Ludens (the spirit of play) in human form”. Sonny Boy stayed on in Europe after the tour had finished and continued working across Europe with the trio of pianist Memphis Slim, guitarist Matt Guitar Murphy and drummer Billie Stepney. In November 1963 all of Sonny Boy’s artistic qualities described above, and more, were captured in a marathon recording session for Denmark’s Storyville Records in the Copenhagen studio of sound engineer Ivar Rosenberg which was located in a small cinema. I think they recorded about 19 tracks in one evening which were split over several releases during the following years and the critics went wild at the time – Paul Oliver, the famous Blues writer, considered the recordings Sonny Boy’s best, and there were rave reviews in the British Jazz and Blues magazines. The best compilation of the recordings was by Bruce Igluaer of Alligator Records who called his release in the early 1990s “Keep It To Ourselves”. It has since been described as one of the best sounding blues records of all time and had audiophile releases on 200g vinyl. I first heard Sonny Boy’s harmonica introduction to the album’s first track, ‘The Sky Is Crying’, when I was nineteen years old I got shivers and was captivated by the intimate musical and emotional detail of the whole album. This is an up close album with the feel and dynamics of classical chamber music or low volume jazz reflecting the live experience of what was being played in the concert halls.

One evening in 1984 or 85 my father came home with this album – Albert King ‘New Orleans Heat’. He told me he had heard it on the radio late at night and had to get it because he loved the song he had heard ‘The Feeling’. I was 14 or 15 and already developed a rising interest in Blues. As a guitar playing teenager in the mid 80’s naturally my main blues guitar hero was Stevie Ray Vaughan but I guess this Albert King album opened the door for me into the real deal guys like Otis Rush, Little Milton, Jimmy Johnson and others. Why this late 70’s mix of deep Blues and lush, funky arrangements struck a chord with a German teenager – I don’t know. I guess you don’t choose your taste in music – it just happens when you can connect to it.  I spent many hours jamming to ‘New Orleans Heat’ in my room and I think it influenced my style of playing and my taste in blues music to this day although I was also strongly into Texas guitar players and Jump Blues in my twenties. Albert King to me is like a slow driving Ferrari. You can feel the immense power and energy but he doesn’t have to prove it – it’s there all the time. The „Velvet Bulldozer“ also had the fitting authority for his mostly no-nonsense song material. Albert King’s singing and playing was always strong and relaxed at the same time. He never overplayed but very rarely he did fire from all cylinders and showed everybody how it’s done with just a few notes.

‘Beware of the Dog’ to me is a masterpiece where every note is infused with pure raw blues energy. The album touches me deep in my soul and brings back a lot of memories. The electrifying opening track “Give Me Back My Wig” immediately sets the right tone. The raw, unpolished sounds of Hound Dog Taylor’s guitar grab attention and weave a story of passion and authenticity. His unique playing style, characterized by raw slide guitar and intense, emotional vocals, immediately plunge you into the depth of his musical expression. Other highlights of the album include: “Let’s Get Funky,” “Comin’ Around The Mountain,” “It’s Allright” and “Freddies Blues. Each song feels like a voyage of discovery within the blues world, with Hound Dog Taylor making his own mark with his idiosyncratic guitar playing that is complemented by the tight rhythm section of Brewer Phillips & Ted Harvey, which propels the music with an irresistible energy. What makes the album truly remarkable is the unpolished, spontaneous live atmosphere it exudes. It instantly transports you to a sultry intimate blues club. This creates a unique listening experience that stimulates the senses and evokes a profound appreciation for the raw beauty of blues culture. ‘Beware of the Dog’ is not just another album: it is a musical treasure that transcends time. It has the power to awaken emotions, evoke memories and send you reeling on the waves of timeless blues. Hound Dog Taylor’s legacy lives on in this masterpiece, and it remains a source of joy and inspiration for anyone who opens up to the power of sincere music. So it was this album that inspired me to record my own Hound Dog Taylor Tribute. Thus, the following songs come from ‘Beware Of The Dog’: ‘Give Me Back My Wig’, ‘Let’s Get Funky’ and ‘Freddie’s Blues’. I very much enjoyed the live shows I got to play with Richard van Bergen and King Berik, where we wanted to bring back the raw energetic music experience of Hound Dog Taylor. Our second album “How How How How” was also completely inspired by the music and energy of Hound Dog Taylor. Beware Of The Dog: highly recommended!

Almost 20 years old and living in rooms for the first time. One room to be exact, but using the common kitchen and shower. After two weeks of tasting this immeasurable freedom, an unexpected phone call came. “Father here, I’m coming to see you.” Fright, excitement, but fun. Quickly cleaned up the mess. Two weeks of frank and free living had now turned the room into an amazingly large mess. Where is the laundry basket? Hm, I don’t have one. Then everything under the bed. The bottle of cologne mother gave me came in handy in this one. Father came in with a huge box. “Here Leendert, I’m sure you can put this to good use.” The box bulged with cans of canned goods and home-made preserves. That whole week I ate canned soup, green beans and hachee. The box was still almost full after this week but I threw it all in the trash. It must all have spoiled after about seven days, I thought. Only much later did I understand the concept of canned food. Canned and preserved vegetables last for years. Oops, mistake. I never dared tell Dad. Thinking you already know a lot. It was the same way with music. The Stones, Zeppelin, Hendrix, I knew it all. Also, by now I had a real pickup with about 50/ 60 records. My collection was already quite something. But did you really know that much? No, of course not. The great voyage of discovery had only just begun. Fortunately. Our landlord – a tad eccentric, but oh so sweet man – was a bit older than us and played very different music during dinner cooking than we were used to. Admittedly, at first I ignored his musical tastes but gradually I began to understand a little more. Not long after that came the big hit. Landlord Joop was playing music I had never heard before. Music that from then on changed everything. Music that was nothing like the rock, blues and pop I was used to. On the turntable was the LP “Bongo Fury” by Frank Zappa. A live record from 1975 with a guest appearance by the legendary Captain Beefhart. Totally unknown territory for me. Well, I knew the name Zappa from a Top 40 hit, but that penny hadn’t dropped yet. But now this record! Totally absurd but also very catchy music that had me completely in its grip. I wanted to hear more of this. Quickly went to the store and bought the LP. For weeks that thing was on the pickup. After work, playing it right away, the a and b sides, one after the other. Sound at 10. My roommates didn’t like it as much but then that was too bad. They just had to get used to my new love. In the months and years that followed I bought just about everything by Zappa. The man became my hero. Also went to two concerts. They are my fondest memories. For the layman, this is somewhat difficult to understand. Zappa`s music is often not very accessible, but if you take your time and are open to it, a world will open up for you. My musical world opened up with “Bongo Fury. The record that turned everything upside down. The record that had malingering with everything that belonged in music. The record that has been so important to me. Thank you Joop, I hope you are doing well. “Music is the best” FZ    

When I was about 14 in the early 1980s, I had a cassette tape with Prince’s music on it, the song Purple Rain. I also knew from the magazines pictures of him dressed in purple with wide blouse, collar and puff sleeves, the fashion at that time. It had something Hendrix-like about it that I had also seen in pictures but I didn’t know his music then. Actually, I was confusing two artists. Now my brother played in a band and with its drummer I was talking about that Prince cassette tape. I said to him ‘This is a nice song by Prince but I think his name used to be Jimi Hendrix’ to which the drummer said that Jimi Hendrix made very different music. ‘Give me that cassette tape and I’ll put Jimi Hendrix music on the rest of it.’This became the album The Jimi Hendrix Concerts. I bought this record myself shortly afterwards. I played a little guitar myself but after hearing this album I thought ‘what the hell is this?’The record was recorded live with all that feedback, and banging against the amp, smashing the amps and with songs like I Don’t Live Today and Red House. That last song starts out as blues but ends up very wild on the record. I didn’t understand it at all, live and then so rough and crude But the more I listened, I found this quite different and wonderful. Especially the song Little Wing, what a sound, full-bodied! This tasted like more and then I also bought Are You Experienced? This was a studio album and a bit more manageable and easier to sort out as a guitarist but by then I was already captivated by live performances of Hendrix. And I’ve always loved him. A word about the album, its cover is a true work of art, a painting with vague outlines in yellow and blue but unmistakably the image of Jimi with his guitar.  

It was usually in the middle of the night, around 4 a.m. or so. For the first few seconds, which seemed like minutes, I didn’t remember exactly where I was or what time it really was. Beside my bed, the green, orange and red lights of the equalizer on my stereo still danced up and down full of energy. As in my now tired ears Freddy King sings “If you keep trying you’ll make it through” and his guitar playing continues to echo, I realize that by now it is time to turn off the music and go to sleep without headphones on my head. Tomorrow is another day. And assume that’s another day where ‘Freddy King – His Early Years’ will be played. In my late teens I found out about the existence of blues through Jimi Hendrix. An uncle of mine was a musician and he had recorded a number of records on cassette tapes, including this compilation LP of Freddie King: His Early Years. And in no time I was obsessed with old blues in which the early recordings of Muddy Waters and Freddy King were at the top of my rankings. I had just picked up the guitar again after years of illness had prevented me from playing.And Freddy’s howling, screaming vocals that he perfectly interspersed with those pointed and then screaming, howling notes on his guitar fit that period perfectly. And if there was one goal in my life, it was to learn to play guitar like Freddy. And so I decided to brainwash myself by putting the cassette tape of Freddy King – His Early Years back on repeat at night and falling asleep to the beautiful sounds of this giant.